“I was told that you would be occupying the area and awaiting our assistance.” The confusion was growing by the second.
“You were misinformed. The Third Battalion, 7th Rajputs remain true to their salt. Do the Garwhalis do the same?”
The comment stung every man who heard it. There was no worse accusation one could make to an Indian soldier than suggest he had not been true to his salt. Some historians had suggested that the horrors of the Indian Mutiny had come from the mutineers feeling so dishonored by their infidelity that nothing they could do would make matters worse. The Garwhali Regiment Captain looked as if he had been slapped across the face. British he might be, but he knew his men and knew the accusation would destroy his position if left unanswered.
“First Battalion, The Royal Garwhal Rifles also remains true to its salt. We move in obedience of orders from London.”
Garry knew how to trump that. “And the 7th Rajputs move on the orders of the Viceroy acting on behalf of the King-Emperor himself.”
The Garwhali captain showed nothing but confusion and near-panic. He had expected nothing like this. The whole situation was outside his experience. In that he was not alone. Nobody on the street that night had experience in this. In the end, he fell back on the one thing that he could rely on, the orders he had received from his Colonel.
“We have our orders. If you will not obey yours, stand aside.”
Garry looked at him and then made his decision. He walked firmly, precisely, to the lead lorry and stood in front of it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Garwhali Captain’s hand move. Garry glimpsed the flash, but heard nothing. All he felt was the heavy impact that he knew was a bullet from a .455 Webley revolver.
Standing at the side of the road, Captain Shashi Madhav saw both the flash and heard the shot that had killed his Colonel. A brief hammer burst from a Vickers-Berthier cut down the Captain. The man hadn’t even tried to take cover. He stood there with a dumbstruck expression on his face, a man poleaxed by the shock of what he had done. He died with that expression still on his face.
Madhav never thought about what he did next; nor did he have anything in mind other than to stop the killing. He ran out into the street, his arms held high.
“Stop! Cease fire! India is free. Shall we mark that freedom by spilling our own blood?”
His anguished words echoed around the street, reflecting off the buildings. As the sound faded away, there was a profound silence. It seemed strangely louder than his shout. It was broken by a rattle from the lorries on the road; the rattle of rifles being lowered, weapons made safe. Madhav’s heart lifted as he realized the crisis was ending. His men wouldn’t have to massacre the Garwhalis after all. Four Gharwalis came out and picked up the body of Colonel Garry, carrying it with respect and honor to the lorries. A few feet away, four Rajputs did the same for the body of the Garwhali who had killed their Colonel.
In his heart, Madhav knew he was watching the birth of a new, national Indian Army.
“What is happening out there, Sir Eric?” Pandit Nehru asked the question amid an office filled with foreboding.
Sir Eric Haohoa had entered the room with a sheath of signals. He shook his head sadly; the night was not one that he would remember with pride. “The attempt by elements of the Army to remove the existing government and return control of India to London is turning into a fiasco. The units that moved on New Delhi were intercepted by loyal regiments. There was some exchange of fire, but the hearts of the mutineers were not in their work. So far, the dead total eleven with another twenty wounded. Mostly they were British officers; their deaths left the men they commanded without a figure to whom their loyalty was attached. In the absence of such figures, they placed their loyalty to India above all else.”
Those words were met with silence. The Indian Army had been the foundation stone of the Empire. It was disturbing for the British administration to see its final allegiance switching away from the Empire to the new state that was growing in India. On the other hand, Nehru was quietly delighted with the news; he had the tact and discretion not to make that fact public.
“The rest of the mutiny?”
Sir Eric continued after the silence had stretched for long enough. “Mostly a fizzle; units refusing orders until loyal troops turned up. The Royal Deccan Horse are holed up in their barracks area and putting up a fight, but they’re the only ones who are making a real show. Everywhere else, it was the same story as in New Delhi. The officers led, but their men only followed out of loyalty to them. Once the chips went down and they saw they were being led down a blind alley, they gave it up in the name of a greater loyalty.”
“What about the Deccan Horse?” Viscount Linlithgow was almost afraid of the answer.
“A Ghurka regiment is moving in to deal with them. We’re sending Blenheim bombers in to hit their base at dawn, with an assault to follow. Once that’s over, this sordid little affair will be done. One thing I should mention. One of the dead officers in New Delhi was Colonel Garry of the Rajputs.”
“The man who alerted us to the danger.” Sir Martyn Sharpe spoke sadly. “India is in his debt. And what of Sir Richard Cardew?”
“Under arrest.” Sir Eric spoke grimly. This was, perhaps, the most difficult aspect of the whole situation. “A policy decision with regard to him and his fellow conspirators will have to be made.”
That thought caused another long silence. Eventually, Nehru voiced the thought that had caused so much concern.
“And the decision we make will decide what kind of country we would like this to be.”
“China.” Cordell Hull’s voice echoed around the room with tones that portended doom.
“China.” Henry Stimson repeated the words with equally gloomy connotations.
“What’s happening in China?” Henry Morgenthau was curious. His long visit to Jamaica left him out of touch with the developing world situation.
“Nothing good and that’s the problem.” Stimson shook his head.
“Ever since the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Chinese have been trying to prolong the war for as long as possible, with the aim of exhausting Japanese resources while they build up their own military capacity. They showed they could fight at the Battle of Shanghai. Their German-trained divisions there held the Japanese back for three months and chewed them up, but they still ended up retreating towards Nanking. At least they proved their army could fight, which was a relief.
“Since then, they’ve adopted a strategy they call ‘magnetic warfare:’ attracting advancing Japanese troops to definite points where they are subjected to ambush, flanking attacks, and encirclements in major engagements. They did this during the successful defense of Changsha last year and the defeat of the Japanese at Guanxi soon afterwards. They followed that by launching a large-scale counter-offensive against the IJA a few months ago. That got beaten back.
“The truth is that China has a low military-industrial capacity, limited experience in modern warfare and their army is poorly-trained, underequipped, and disorganized. They lost the only well-trained and equipped units they had in the Battle of Shanghai. The only things that are saving them is the influx of supplies from abroad and that the Japanese have encountered tremendous difficulties in administering and garrisoning the territory they have seized. They recruited a large collaborationist Chinese Army to maintain public security in those occupied areas, but it’s largely ineffective. Japanese control is limited to just railroads and major cities and vast Chinese countryside is a hotbed of Chinese partisan activities.